Digital Digest: 20th April 2017

Abbey Torrance and Emma Saddleton round up the best social and mobile news from the last two weeks in this, the Digital Digest.

Abbey Torrance and Emma SaddletonLondonAppleFacebookYouTubeGoogle

Apple To Launch App Store Search Ads In The UKApple is going to be launching on the 25th April biddable search ads within the App Store in the UK, New Zealand and Australia. This has been available in the US since September, and the opportunity has been eagerly anticipated on British shores.

‘The paid ads appear under the search banner within the App Store when they are related to a user’s search query, for instance, a search for a “to do list” may prompt an ad for a task management app first.The service is designed to help small and independent developers rack up more downloads and gives them the ability to refine their audience by gender, age, or specified geographical areas. Apple says it operates the service on a cost-per-tap model, meaning developers only pay when a user taps on their ad’.

How obvious will it be to users? As ever, the user is at the centre of design and Apple has ensured that it will not be ‘intrusive’ and will be ‘limited to one suggestion per App Store search query’ as well as ‘clearly demarcated with an "Ad" tag’.

Facebook’s Betting On AR At F8Facebook’s annual developer conference, F8, is well under way and Facebook are announcing big steps by the day. Updates can be found here as they come out, but 3 key announcements are below:

They will be launching a camera platform to make it easier to create AR experiences, looking to bring the tech into the mainstream.

Snapchat has also just released it’s 3D lenses called World Lenses, as we see the big companies compete to make solid ground in this space.

VR is still a thing, as Oculus Rift sees a progression that is designed to make it easier for us to film and share our experiences with our friends.

I wouldn’t scoff – many were doubtful about the potential update of Facebook Live, however now 20% of all Facebook videos are now filmed live. (Thanks, Dan Calladine for the link!)

They are integrating with other parts of our lives, having convinced both Apple and Spotify to build extension for their music platforms

Google Can Now Turn Your Scrawls Into Works Of Art (Ish)For those who have always wished they had the skill of Picasso, you can now turn doodles into images. An interesting AI experiment, Google’s latest efforts showcase how machine learning can develop and move towards more realistic recognition of slightly less-than-clear input.